The bigger they are the harder they brawl

Rating: 9/10 (18 January 2014)

As I watched this movie I felt Guillermo del Toro asking me: Wanna have a dose of sweet awesome fun? Grab some popcorn, buy a red flavored Icee, lay back and enjoy this movie brother. And that was all I did.
This movie tells the story about people who pilot giant robots that are up to stop the obliteration of our species when giant monsters, straight out of every ones childhood fantasy, burst out of a portal in the Pacific Ocean. It may sound cliché, and I can proudly say it is full of clichés and it doesn't shy away from the fact. It knows what it was sent to this good earth for and that is entertain the hell out of us. And it does that oh so good. And looks astonishing while doing so! From the plot it is implied you expect some ginormous robot vs big monster battles, and holy crap are they going to blow your skin of. Beautifully filmed for you to see the scale of the situations and for these brawls to look just badass. The Hong Kong battle in particular is going to stand out as a perfect set piece for me. And responsible for all of this are the special effects. In my opinion what helps to scale out things is are the water effects. How it cascades off these giants is as realistic as it gets. After all this focus on its looks and battles you may be wondering about the human element of the movie. While not perfect the arcs these characters go through with each other are fun to watch. Especially Idris Elba who transmits authority like a boss. Charlie Hunamm while not as good manages to hold as a main character. Rinko Kikuchi, the female lead is the one who should win the "Underrated hot chick of the year" award. And finally we have the two crazy scientists played by Charlie Day and Burn Gorman who while incredibly cliché and hyped up on something unknown tend to be funny and energetic. A curious fact in the movie is that it shows the social reaction to these monsters and robots and realistically it isn't always fear but propaganda and adapting to the situation. The second one involves Ron Perlman in it. After all this praise there is one stand out sequence that involves Mako's (Rinko Kikuchi's) past that you should really look out for. It changes the tone to a more serious and dark one and is made with excellence.
And of course there has to be a negative or two in this flick and the one negative I can pick is that while the movie builds itself on clichés sometimes these go over the legal limit and strive into predictability and unoriginality. But in general this is an amazing achievement in entertainment and special effects that you should really look for if you are having a grey day and want to jack release your worries by watching robots beat the living crap out of some monsters. I'm giving this jacked up child dream a 9/10.